Paper Title
Seniors’ Social Networks, Media Use, and Subjective Health

Abstract
With the Korean population is aging at an unprecedented rate, the seniors’ roles and metal health in society is becoming an increasingly important issue. Solving public health problems associated with old age is particularly salient in this country. As the media use and social networks of older adults is related to their social participation and well-being, investigating the media use patterns of older adults and their relationship to self-rated health and depression levels is important for establishing and researching public health policies. The aims of this study were to identify media use patterns and social network sizes (diverse, family, congregant, congregant-restricted, and restricted) among older adults in South Korea and to examine the relationship of these social networks and the media use patterns with self-rated health levels. Data from the 2016 national survey of Korean Media Foundation were analyzed. Hierarchical Multi-variate regression analyses were conducted to examine associations among the identified social network sizes, social media use and self-rated health levels. The analyses revealed that the larger social networks sizes showed the less levels of depressed and higher health rate. The social media use rate was positively associated with more favorable subjective mental health beyond the influence of health variable in seniors who has the small sizes of social networks. In summary, we discussed comprehensive social media use policies for older Korean adults.
Index Terms: Health, Seniors, Social Media, Social Networks.